Municipal Courts

The settlement follows a lawsuit accusing Maplewood of running “a mechanism to extort payment from vulnerable targets.”

Individuals who were fined, faced arrest or spent time in jail because they could not pay between 2013 and 2021 are eligible to sign up for compensation.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Tony Messenger's new book explores how county and municipal courts exploit people, creating a cycle that dooms poor people to mountains of debt and frequent jail stays.

Tom Zoellner’s new book, “The National Road: Dispatches From a Changing America," offers a journey into the uneasy soul of the nation: what unites us, what divides us, and what lies in the middle between the gleaming cities of the coasts. He discussed it on "St. Louis on the Air."

Because of the coronavirus pandemic, it's been nearly six months since municipal courts in St. Louis County were able to meet in person. That's created a backlog of thousands of cases ranging from speeding tickets to driving while intoxicated to uncut grass. Like so many other institutions, those local courts have adapted. There are about 80 municipal courts in the St. Louis area, and at least two-thirds of them are now offering a video court option.

Five years ago this month, the nonprofit legal advocacy group ArchCity Defenders and its allies opened a new line of attack on what they viewed as the…

Michael Brown’s 2014 death at the hands of a Ferguson police officer painted a clear picture of the troubled relationship between the police and the…

ArchCity Defenders, the nonprofit civil rights law firm, has teamed up with the St. Louis County Library and the Mound City Bar Association to launch…

St. Louis City Municipal Court is working to chip away at the tens of thousands of outstanding arrest warrants in its system.The court will once again…

Starting in January, African-American women will lead two of the busiest courthouses in Missouri for the first time in history.Judge Gloria Reno was…